samandjack.net

Story Notes: Title: The Archeologist

Author: Alli (alli@ecis.com)

Rating: PG/PG-13

Category: Future story, SJR, angst

Archive: SJA and Heliopolis

The Andromeda Series
1. The Assignment
2. The Aide
3. The Afterglow
4. The Arising
5. The Allusion
6. The Attack
7. The Accident
8. The Anger
9. The Alien
10. The Archeologist


* * * * *

|| Daniel Jackson ||



"Odi et amo," I murmured. "Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio; sed fieri sentio et excrucior."

"Huh?"

"Quintus Valerius Catullus. 'I hate and I love. Perhaps you ask why I do so. I do not know, but I feel it, and I am in torment.'"

Jack tapped a ballpoint pin hard against the desk; the look he shot me was withering. "Shut up, Daniel."

"How about 'absence makes the heart grow fonder'?"

He glared. "Who the hell got you the Proverb-a-Day calendar? If you're trying to say something, just go ahead and say it, will you?"

I had a dozen others: 'Looking back, I have this to regret: too often when I loved, I did not say so.'

'Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.'

'The mind has a thousand eyes/ And the heart but one/ Yet the light of a whole life dies/ When love is done.'

But they WERE just remarks and proverbs, stiff and stilted, and Jack simply did not want to hear them right now.

He also didn't want to hear that he had been in love with Sam.

WAS in love with Sam.

"What do you WANT me to say?" I asked tiredly, standing. I didn't want him here, not in my office, my sanctuary, but I couldn't find it within myself to tell him to leave. Despite everything that had happened over the last few months - maybe because of it - I still owed him something. As a friend, and as a human being. By the same token, I couldn't bring myself to cut him any slack. "Do you want me to say I'm sympathetic? That I feel sorry for you? Because I don't."

Jack accepted this stonily, rapping the pen harder against the wood. Something tore inside me, dissolving into sympathy, or a facsimile. He'd lost too much already...

"You know, to some extent Sam's right," I reminded him. "You HAVEN'T been acting like yourself lately. Then again, neither has she, so I guess I can't put all the blame on you."

"Appreciate it." Jack began to dig the metal tip into the surface, releasing his anger single-mindedly on the poor, defenseless table-top. "You should have seen her, Danny. Ranting and raving about how I hate the Tok'ra and Martouf, trying to make ME look like the bad guy when she was the one who... And I have NOT been acting weird."

I took the pen away before he could inflict real damage. "Did you ask her to stay?"

"Daniel, I -"

"Did you?"

Jack rested his head in his hands, looking for all the world like a man utterly defeated, beaten by the world. "Not in so many words," he grumbled, and I nodded, raising an eyebrow. Never had I wanted to be wrong so badly.

"I think my point has been made," I told him simply.

Jack stood quickly, surprising me with the force of his movements and the pain evident in his eyes, shining into his face like a silent scream for help. "Daniel... you have no idea. This is just a huge weight off my shoulders. Carter has been... been plaguing me for months. All I can think about is her... and it's driving me crazy. I'm sick of her -- I'm just sick. I can't even look at her anymore; it only makes it worse. Now... now I can get my mind off her and concentrate on kicking some Gou'ald ass. You know, I should go right now and THANK Marty for such a perfect solution. This is practically the best thing that could have happened!"

I regarded him evenly, wondering where the man I'd thought I'd known had gone. Wondering why his expression didn't seem to match his words, like a badly dubbed movie, voices not quite appearing to correspond with the mouthed words.

On the surface, this arrangement DID seem heaven-sent, did seem the perfect solution... but problems had never been solved by running away. I knew that. Jack should have known it. The two of us had had more than our fair share of abandonment and betrayal, loss and injury over the years. I'd seriously thought that he had broken out of that pattern, that M.O. of taking off when things got tough, forgiving himself for Charlie's death and for his wife's renunciation of those scarred vows. I'd seriously started to hope that he would be able to move out of that haunted past, and move on with life, leaving the shadows behind.

Some thought that he might do that with Sam.

He'd liked her from the beginning. I didn't know when he started to love her, and more than likely he didn't either. I understood how that happened. My relationship with Sha're had moved along many of the same lines. Resentment, grudging acceptance, total adoration.

That adoration was what I had hoped would get them though this rough spot. Seemed that it hadn't.

I loved Sam, as a friend and as more, and I did not want to see her hurt, even - especially - if it was by the hand of a man I considered my best friend. But as I had said, she wasn't blameless. Jack had hurt her, made her suffer, made her cry in front of Teal'c and myself, and for that I would always harbor a hard spot in my heart for him. However, she had hurt him, too. She was making him suffer, right before my eyes, forcing him to say things aloud that we both knew were absolutely untrue. And even if she hadn't reduced him to tears in public, certainly he was degraded to that own personal humiliation in the privacy of his own home.

I knew about that, too.

Both the victim. Both the culprit. Both guilty and in pain. I couldn't take sides here, even if I wanted to.

"Like hell," I told Jack flatly, and walked away.



* * * * *

|| Samantha Carter ||



I closed my eyes and tried to tell myself that I wasn't running away.

I was running TO somewhere, after all, and shouldn't that make all the difference?

The meeting with Garshaw had - for once - gone well. There had been no outbursts over how primitive the Tau'ri were, how questionable the Tok'ra's motives were, how much one still held secret from other. I didn't look at Jack and he didn't look at me, and I was fine with that. I could feel him, though, skulking, brooding - though surprisingly taciturn - and I was relieved when he left as soon as Hammond dismissed us.

I told the General that I was leaving with the Tok'ra, making it clear in the most civil of ways that he would either allow me to go or I would resign. He was so shocked that I actually felt sorry for him, wanted to repent, wanted to laugh about it and tell the poor man that it was just a big joke... but then he agreed that perhaps it was 'in the best interests of all concerned', and that was it. I was free to go.

I should have felt light and unencumbered, liberated from the anger and constant friction I'd wrought on the base... but I didn't. I felt lost and empty... and childish. Like I was running away.

But I was running WITH someone, after all, and shouldn't that make all the difference?

Martouf was a wonderful man who cared deeply for me. He was honest and straightforward, and what I carried of Jolinar inside me only served to make his company more pleasant. So what if my feelings are based on hers, I wondered at one point, packing some personal effects into a small duffel. If the Tok'ra hosts and symbiotes could love as one, why couldn't I? What was so wrong with that?

Some civilian clothes went into the bag. A couple notebooks, filled with theories and equations, notes scribbled in the margins. A few of my favorite novels. Not much. Nothing that would remind me of this place too terribly.

Daniel, I thought, with a keen sense of longing and loss. Teal'c. Janet. Hammond. Graham Simmons, Andrew Parker, Naomi Williams. Friends and colleagues who hadn't attributed to this awful situation, but who I would miss, and would hopefully miss me. All because I was running away.

I was running to somewhere.

I was running with someone.

Shouldn't that make all the difference?

It didn't. Not in the least.



* * * * *

|| Janet Frasier ||



"How long?" asked Daniel glumly.

Sam, fiddling nervously with the strap of her bag, shrugged. "Jadae was with us for over a year."

"Not that long," I blurted, appalled.

Another shrug, weak and helpless. "As long as it takes."

As long as it takes to do... what? The question lingered on my lips, begging to be asked, and it took every bit of willpower to bite it back. As long as it took to figure out the details of the plan? To implement the first stage, the second? As long as it took to forget about us?

About O'Neill?

"Jadae's going to be the new liaison," explained Tony Warren, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "We'll be seeing her on a pretty regular basis, and she offered to shuttle correspondence back and forth."

At that, Sam managed a smile. "You expect me to believe she actually spoke three civil words to you?"

Warren ducked his head, grinning. "Four, if you want to get technical."

"You've come a long way," she told him, mockingly impressed, but when the captain looked up, all traces of humor were absent from his face. The moment of levity passed and sank faster than the Titanic.

"Thank you," he told her.

Sam sobered immediately, nodded tersely, and watched with an unreadable expression as Warren turned and left the embarkation room without a glance over his shoulder.

"He really liked you," murmured Daniel, almost to himself.

"I don't know why," replied Sam.

The Stargate began to revolve. My friend adjusted her bag awkwardly.

"Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I heard something about 'Lieutenant Colonel' a few minutes ago," started Daniel conversationally, trying to keep things lighthearted for these final few moments. "What's that about?"

"It's just a field promotion," Sam answered with a tight nod. "I don't know if he's trying to make me look more desirable to the Tok'ra or what, but..."

"Congratulations," Daniel told her simply.

For an instant, when Sam looked up at him, I was certain that there were tears shining in her eyes. Then it was gone, and I told myself that it had merely been a reflection, a trick of light. "Thanks," she said softly, her voice gruff, as though her throat was crammed full of words she wanted to say but couldn't. "Daniel--"

"No," he interrupted firmly. "I'm not going to say goodbye, because you're going to be back before we know it."

A unpretentious nod, and then her eyes slid down to me, still and nearly silent at Daniel's side. "I'm going to be back," she repeated.

Acknowledgements and maudlin farewells, all planned and mentally rehearsed, crumbled down on top of each other like the Berlin Wall. All that remained standing was my own hard-boiled resentment. "You should have tried harder," I reproved, wincing as I spoke. My voice was soft, but the words themselves were cruel and unforgivable.

Sam flinched. "I should have. You're right."

But none of us could go back, and no one but the Colonel and her could change things... and they just didn't seem interested.

The Stargate opened with its familiar whoosh and ripple.

Hammond appeared in the doorway with several Tok'ra dressed in plain brown tunics, and Garshaw, wrapped in gray and purple.

And Martouf.

The EXCUSE.

I watched, vowing to not let a single thread of emotion unravel itself, promising to stay in one piece, as they walked up the ramp and into the wormhole. First two of the supernumeraries, then Garshaw, then the other two... and then Sam.

She didn't look back.

Martouf did, but only briefly. Then the Stargate disengaged, and all was silent, still, and empty.

Myself included.

Hammond took a deep and unsteady breath.

Daniel reached down and took my hand in his.

Jack O'Neill was nowhere to be seen.

Damn the man.



* * * * *

Coming soon... The Absence

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